On the upcoming derby against Olympiacos:

«We prepare for matches against each opponent with the same respect and in the same way. We know that this is an important match with his own story, and that Olympiacos is our great opponent. But we will prepare by focusing on our own team. We’ll see what we have to improve and play with the courage to win, just as we do in every game – and this is what we will do this time as well.»

On what he takes away from the win over Larissa:

«We came here to play good football and to win the game. As far as the recovery time for my players and the fact that we played on Saturday after having a match on the Wednesday before I do not and will not use as an excuse. In the final 30 minutes of the match we were missing that freshness a little. We did not create good opportunities and that’s down to the tiredness from the previous game. In any case, we wanted to start strongly and get ourselves ahead early in the match, which we did and that helped us a lot. Larissa had the initiative after that in terms of movement but we managed to score a second goal.

In the second half we knew that Larissa would not give up the fight because they are a determined side, irrespective of the fact that there may have been many changes in the make-up of the team. Their style has stayed the same. They tried to win as many free-kicks as possible around the penalty area as that is one of their strong points.

We succeeded in managing the rest of the game in the right way at 2-1 up. Of course by the end of the game we had to withstand a lot of pressure to get the win which was our basic aim, but another key points is that none of our players got injured. Still, I’m curious even now to understand why this match was played on Saturday and not on Sunday? Just for my own information.» 

On whether he feels the result was a fair one:

«The result is fair because we are the team who scored the most goals. The effectiveness of a team is what makes the difference. For example against Aris both home and away we did not get the results we wanted because our opponent was more effective than we were.»